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The Inevitable Error of the British Guarantee to Poland of March 1939: a Revision1

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The Inevitable Error of the British Guarantee to Poland of March 1939: a Revision1 Z E S Z Y T Y N A U K O W E UNIWERSYTETU RZESZOWSKIEGO SERIA FILOLOGICZNA ZESZYT 85 / 2014 STUDIA ANGLICA RESOVIENSIA 11 Donald TRINDER University of Rzeszow [email protected] THE INEVITABLE ERROR OF THE BRITISH GUARANTEE TO POLAND OF MARCH 1939: A REVISION1 Abstract: On 31st March, 1939, Neville Chamberlain announced to Parliament that a guarantee of territorial integrity had been extended to Poland. This single act more than any other can be seen as the main trigger for the outbreak of the Second World War. The ensuing article will discuss the main figures involved in ensuring that the guarantee came into being and the reasons behind the decision to extend the guarantee on behalf of the British Government. Also, the evolution of the historiography of the period will also be discussed in detail. It is intended to demonstrate that the guarantee, along with its logical implications and consequences, was the only option available for both parties, and by extension the government of France, given the circumstances in March 1939 following the partition of Czechoslovakia. Key Words: Anglo-Polish relations, Military Guarantee, Appeasement, Józef Beck, Neville Chamberlain Introduction On the 30th March, 1939 the first concrete step was taken on the road to global conflagration as British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, hand drafted a note which was to be presented to the Polish Ambassador in London, Edward Raczyński. The content of this note was an unconditional guarantee of the territorial integrity of the Second Republic of Poland against German aggression, and an open-ended promise to come to the aid of the Poles with the all the powers at the disposal of His 1 I would like to take the opportunity to thank Professor Kleparski for his guidance, advice and support during the writing of this work. The feedback has been invaluable and any errors, either factual or stylistic, remain of my own making. 213 Majesty’s Government. From that moment on, the guarantee has proven one of the most divisive questions when one examines the history of Anglo-Polish relations. The British traditionally saw this as a move to try to restrain Hitler, and possibly to allow London to exert some influence on Poland when it came to negotiations over Gdansk. The Polish view has traditionally propounded the notion that Britain extended a guarantee that they had no intention of fulfilling, which led to the formulation of the Great Betrayal thesis.2 It is the aim set to this paper to attempt to demonstrate that these two intractable and contradictory views can be interwoven to produce a synthetic view of the Guarantee which overhauls any interpretation which tends towards the fact that this was erroneous for either side. Indeed, after examining the evolution of the British historiographical tradition, a discussion of the English and Polish views of the time will be presented, before the conclusion is propounded that this Guarantee was, in fact, the best (arguably only) solution to the dissolution of Czecho-Slovakia in March 1939. The British Historiographical Tradition With the high levels of state control of the press which were implemented at the outbreak of World War II, it seems somewhat surprising that one of the most influential and, at the same time, provocative pieces of historical work on the subject of the appeasement of Hitler was actually published in July 1940, barely a month after the evacuation of Dunkirk and two weeks after the Franco-German Armistice resulted in the creation of the Vichy Republic and the effective isolation of Britain in the War. The anonymously published pamphlet entitled Guilty Men was a hostile critique of the continual appeasement of the Nazi regime throughout the 1930s and the complete lack of readiness of the British military to cope with the impending danger. Originally published under the pen name Cato, the three journalists3 (who were incidentally employees of the powerful media magnate and Conservative Party supporter Lord Beaverbrook) clearly placed the blame for the disaster of 1940, and the War in general, squarely at the feet of successive governments, and they did not shirk from naming and shaming specific individuals, including all three Prime Ministers from the 1930s (Ramsay MacDonald, Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain). Despite the fact that the pamphlet was not handled by any of the main book retailers of the time, over 200, 000 copies were sold by the middle of August. This hurriedly produced manuscript (the total time 2 For more on the British perspective, see Taylor (1976) and Carr (1990) among others; while a representative view of the Polish perspective is offered in Roszkowski (2002). 3 Michael Foot, Peter Howard and Frank Owen, who represented a broad political spectrum at the time (Labour, Conservative and Liberal). 214 of writing was four days and pre-publication editing and preparation for press totalled four weeks), which was strewn with errors and factual inaccuracies, was to shape the way that British historians viewed the causes of the War up until the 1960s. Cato’s view was reinforced and upheld by the monumental publication of the British Wartime Prime Minister, who in 1948 published the first part of his six volume history of the conflict. The Gathering Storm reinforced three key elements of British historiographical thinking at the time: the treaty of Versailles was the key underlying factor in the creation of internal German tension, and allowed the breeding ground for the spread of Nazism; the Appeasers were naïve and incompetent in allowing Hitler to rearm the German nation and expand at will without tangible consequences; and finally that Hitler, in pursuing the policies which he had laid out in Mein Kampf, was responsible with his small retinue of loyal supporters for steering Europe inexorably along the path to War. The most common criticism of The Gathering Storm today is that it represents more of a memoir rather than serious piece of historical writing. Extreme critics even view it as nothing further than pretentious self-aggrandisement on behalf of Churchill. Regardless of the modern interpretations, this does remain as a prototypical example of the accepted view of History from 1940s and 50s. A more scholarly approach is ascribed to Alan Bullock, whose groundbreaking Hitler: A Study in Tyranny (1952) was the first full scale biography of Hitler to be published anywhere in the world. In this, Bullock indicated that Hitler was not an evil genius who had plotted the downfall of the world, but was rather an opportunist who was bullied into increasingly radical and reprehensible forms of action by his intriguing henchmen. Thus, the traditionalist approach to the Causes of World War Two placed the blame for the outbreak of hostilities firmly and squarely at the feet of the British political establishment. Of course, there was equal blame apportioned to the imperialist nature of the Nazis and Adolph Hitler in specific, but a surprising amount of attention was devoted to why the British had failed to act, and take preventive measures prior to the invasion of Poland in September 1939. This entire view was challenged by the eminent Oxford historian A.J.P. Taylor, who in 1961 published his highly controversial The Origins of the Second World War. As the pioneer of the revisionist approach to the inter-War period, Taylor sought to strike a balanced and objective view of the events of the 1930s. While he remained consistent in the view that Versailles was the ultimate cause of all later evils,4 Taylor differed from the accepted view of history in two key areas. His first ‘revision’ was connected with the controversial policy of Appeasement: Taylor saw this as a logical approach to relations with Germany and, given the depleted nature of the British military, he suggested that there was no other feasible course 4 This thesis is commonly referred to as the ‘Thirty Years War’, which was first suggested by German political Scientist Sigmund Neumann in 1946, before achieving wide public recognition when Churchill made reference to the idea in the introduction to The Gathering Storm. 215 of action. Secondly, and somewhat more provocatively, Taylor insisted that Hitler was not a rabid war-monger, but rather represented a coherent continuation of the German imperial policy first propounded by Otto von Bismarck and Kaiser Wilhelm II. Taylor did, however, remain consistent with the views of Bullock in portraying Hitler as a haphazard opportunist who simply took advantage of situations as they arose, rather than operating according to a grand plan.5 The work of Taylor provoked fierce criticism, with hostile reviews being published in the Times Literary Supplement within days of the books original publication, but Taylor was not without his supporters, most notably E.H. Carr, who published a number of articles proclaiming the value of the general thesis of Taylor and also the impeccable logic of the work as a whole.6 Since then, the debate has focussed on two main areas, the first of which being the level to which the British Government had been somehow complicit in the events which led up to the outbreak of the Second World War. The second area of debate encompassed a truly international flavour, with historians of many nations seeking to add their voice to the conflict. The basic question revolves around something which was first noticed as a point of divergence between two distinguished British scholars, the aforementioned Bullock and Hugh Trevor-Roper. The question was extremely simple:
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